That's not a fair comparison. A desktop wallpaper could be 8 MB for a modern OS just because of screen resolution. A 4-minute music video would probably be 100 MB.
But PC gamer isn't downloading 8mb wallpapers or 100mb 4k music videos. They're downloading ads and and other nonsense.
Plus, if I decide to download a music video, that's on me. I chose to download a 100mb file.
If I just want to read what amounts to a few paragraphs of text with some branding, I don't think it's fair to say that I'm also choosing to download 40+mb of nonsense that isn't text. Maybe in this new modern web, that is a conscious decision I make by clicking on any link anywhere, but I think the point of the article is that it shouldn't be the case.
The casual user likely doesn't know what an ad blocker is, and many who do likely have one of those ad blockers that may reduce the number of ads displayed but collect everything about your browsing habits.
One time, I needed this. I lost my phone with a physical SIM card and needed a replacement that day. Now I'm trying to remember the eSIM transfer flow to know if this is still an issue.
But also, which MVNO should you go to? Carriers supposedly prioritize their own customers, so it feels a bit like running on spot instances.
> Carriers supposedly prioritize their own customers
They explicitly do, even among their own customers and plans. If you Google the carrier name plus QCI, you’ll find tables where people have documented, which plans are in which priority group
I've also seen MVNOs be denied frequency bands or cells that were in the highest demand, leading to worse connectivity despite being on the same network.
> But also, which MVNO should you go to? Carriers supposedly prioritize their own customers, so it feels a bit like running on spot instances.
If you are so paranoid, just get multiple SIMs? Most phones support that these days, especially multiple eSIM. And the plans are really cheap (at least where I live).
Mint (T-Mobile MVNO) has been great for me, $20/month/line and my one experience with international travel was good ($20 for 10 days). I used to be on Verizon and the quality of service doesn’t seem any worse while the price is dramatically lower.
Mint works well until it doesn't. I travel a lot and use voice over ip(VoIP). One day I called and got an automated message that my account needed funds. It didn't, my annual payment was months away.
My call to tech support was the generic worst. He insisted there was trouble with my current cell tower and I should reboot my phone. (ignoring the fact that I was able to get automated message). I explained I was using voice over ip, but the tech support didn't seem to understand that technology. Perhaps it wasn't in the script. I was on the call for about 30 minutes and eventually gave up. Phone started working about eight hours later.
Previous issue was with their roaming in foreign countries, however with VoIP that hasn't been an issue for years. So, a couple problems in about eight years. I rank them as one of the best among the terrible options.
Insisting on saying VoIP to the Mint rep instead of WiFi Calling (the term used by Apple, Google, Mint, and practically everyone else) is asking for a bad time.
eSIM transfers are an absolute nightmare on T-Mobile. I recently did two of them and both times, the transfer started but never finished, so I ended up with no service on either device. That means no ability to call their support line and no ability to receive the confirmation SMS they use to verify you are the correct person. They also immediately permanently nuke your physical SIM card so the only way to go back to sanity is to purchase another $10 physical sim card or get one of the physical sim cards that you load eSIMs onto (I did the latter so it won't self-destruct every time I do a transfer).
1. They only do transfers through their native app, not on their website. To log in to their native app, they will do SMS verification. So I sure hope you are still logged in before they lose your eSIM and leave you with no service at all.
2. If you are able to get into their native app so you can access their tech support, their AI chatbot will flat-out lie to you and tell you that T-Mobile cannot send you a QR code to download your eSIM (even though T-Mobile's own website states that they can). If you ask politely for a human, it will resist. I've found "connect me to a human you worthless fucking bot" is the secret passcode to get a real human.
3. If you request they send you a QR code, some of their support staff will ignore that request and still try to initiate the transfer through their app, so clearly requesting the QR code is not a common procedure.
4. When you request a QR code, even though you provide the EID, they will ask for an IMEI number. They then generate the QR code for whatever EID they have associated with your IMEI number in their database, completely ignoring the EID number you sent them. They did this to me _three_ times. The only way I managed to break the cycle was I sent them an IMEI number for a phone that was never on their network so they'd finally listen to me when I told them my EID number.
I'm never buying a phone without a physical sim card slot again. There's nothing wrong with the eSIM technology but the carriers have decided to make it as miserable as possible. The hardest part about transferring a physical SIM is finding a paperclip.
As a counterpoint (not sure if this was t-mobile, apple, or both), I just upgraded from an iPhone 11 with physical sim, to iPhone 17 with esim.
All I had to do was hold the new phone next to the old one, and it just transferred the line over and deactivated the old sim automatically. I wasn't even in the US (so not even on their network), and it was stupidly seamless.
It sounds like t-mobile support has gone downhill. Last time I had to contact support was 2020, and it was really easy back then. I rarely had to wait more than 5 minutes to get a human, and I once had an issue escalated to the "executive resolutions" team and resolved to my satisfaction the day it was opened.
Apple’s system mostly works. If you need to reissue an esim without being able to transfer from an existing device on T-Mobile though need to either call in and give imei or get past the chatbot and there’s a page text support can give you to enter details. I was never able to successfully use the shit t-life app’s manage esim option.
You were on the happy path. I just had to get involved for a family member that broke their Apple phone and couldn't get their SIM transferred. Even after adding them as an authorized user under duress, they had to physically go to a T-Mobile store to get their phone on the network.
> When you request a QR code, even though you provide the EID, they will ask for an IMEI number.
Everything else you say is accurate but they do not require this, T-Mobile is the only major in the US that doesn’t match EID to IMEI. I know because I use a removable esim (esim.me) euicc with multiple phones. I have to read the super long eid off to support to activate it. I cannot activate service on this card with verizon or at&t as its eid doesn’t match to an imei for them.
I think you're misunderstanding. I'm not saying T-Mobile locks the EID and IMEI together. I'm saying their tech support will completely ignore any EID you send them and instead look up an EID in their database based on the IMEI you send them. If you manage to convince the tech support to actually listen to you and use the correct EID then yes, everything will work out fine and you'll be able to move the card across devices.
I was also using a removable esim (from jmp.chat) and they did this to me three times. Each time it went like this:
> Me: Please send me a QR code to download my esim. My EID is XXXXXXXX
> Them: Thanks for providing your EID, please send me your IMEI (the first time this was just a plain message, the 2nd and 3rd time they sent me a link to a form to submit my IMEI to them)
> Me: <sends them my IMEI>
<at this point, the first two representatives initiated a transfer through their app and told me to wait 2 hours and then the transfer would finish. I told them whatever automatic transfer they just initiated will not work and they _need_ to send me the QR code.>
> Them: What is your e-mail address
> Me: My e-mail address is XXXXX@XXXX.XXXX
and then they'd send me a QR code. I'd then attempt to download it to my jmp.chat esim and I'd get an error that the EID was incorrect. Then, I'd try using the QR code to activate the built-in eSIM on the phone with the IMEI that I sent them, and it would work, proving that they were looking up the EID for the IMEI that I sent them rather than paying attention to the EID that I started the chat with.
The 4th and final time, I sent them my Librem 5's IMEI which had never been on T-Mobile and does not support eSIM. They told me that the phone was carrier locked, I assured them it wasn't and explicitly told them "it is important the QR code is for the EID I provided you. The past representatives have ignored that, leading to the error message <pasted the error from EasyLPAC's logs that was something like EID is incorrect>". THAT time they finally listened and sent a QR code for the correct EID, which let me download the eSIM to my jmp.chat card. At that point I was able to move the card across devices without issue.
Apologies on getting back late but… I’ve never had that experience. Historically I would call during day and get someone stateside. They would ask for IMEI and I would say ‘it’s not in your db but EID works’ and then they’d let me read that off, never an issue. Now I use the chat, it’s faster since they just give a portal link you drop the details to.
Call during day or you get the Philippines and they don’t understand specific requests like this as well. If you must do it at night use the chat route.
US Mobile gets you QCI8 (same priority as Verizon postpaid) when you're on the Verizon network with a 5G device, and they let you pay for QCI8 on AT&T.
USM is the only MVNO I've seen that actually advertises QCI tiers. I had to look the term up when I was initially considering them, as I'd never even encountered it before. It was a major factor in finally feeling confident I wouldn't be giving up too much by leaving AT&T.
Personally switched from VZW to Google Fi. It's on TMOs network. As you can imagine, when engaging with Google's support was hilarious when there was something I needed, but overall I don't miss Verizon and pay drastically less.
Is Google Fi particularly cheap? Their normal prices seem to start at $35/month for 30GB of data which is more than Verizon's Visible plans at $25/month. (The current 50% off offer on Google Fi does seem a good deal though.)
I ended up switching to Mobile-X since I'm on wifi so much I only use a few gigs of data a month. $2/month + $1.90/GB vs Google Fi's flexible plan of $20/month + $10/GB.
My Google Fi is $20/m for connectivity and then $0.01/Mb until I hit 6Gb ($80) at which point everything after is no cost. Most of my data is on wifi, so my bill rarely goes above $25
I just buy local eSIM's online when I go abroad now. Lycamobile is usually good around Europe if you land in a country with them. Their UK and Portugal subsidiaries are £5 or €4 / month with 30-50GB in country including 12GB roaming in other European countries. Order before you go and get the eSIM QR code by email. But you must be in the appropriate country to activate.
The Google Fi plans with roaming are either $65/month (100GB) or $20/month + $10/GB. I often end up using quite a bit of data abroad.
For those of us who have crappy coverage with TMO, Verizon themselves offer a much better alternative to their postpaid service, called Visible. It's pretty hilarious how much better of an experience it is, and you are on the same network.
I haven't had any issues with tmobile coverage (that wasn't also a problem with verizon) in well over a decade now. Hell it even worked well in the dense hilly jungles of burundi. Verizon customer service was so bad before I switched I swore them off for life....
The single place I noticed verizon gets coverage and tmobile doesn't is three levels underground in a concrete parking garage.
Coverage is very specific to your situation. I've had basically no coverage on Verizon in offices in the Bay Area where T-mobile worked fine while colleagues could only get Verizon at home.
Plus according to recent research being twins with same DNA doesn't mean they have same body parameters today, especially as one experienced traumatic event in juvenile age. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics
Options that are equivalent enough for most end users just cause confusion. There are also too many distros, and the Gnome vs. KDE competition set desktop Linux back another 10 years. That's three dimensions of big, important choices with not much downside if you pick the happy path and a whole lot of downside if you don't.
I don't know what's the difference between x11, wayland, gnome, kde and all the others.
The fact that people always debate over which one is best is one of the reason why I don't switch to Linux desktop.
Theres always the sane debate of Macos VS Windows VS Linux. That's a good one for me because there are many pros and cons for each of them.
But then, when you try to really look into Linux, it's an unstoppable flow of "systemd=bad", "snap is bad", “only the distro xyz is the real one because it respects principle abc".
Even the emacs VS vim debate seems saner than this.
I know the underlying spirit of Linux is the liberty to choose whatever you want, but this perpetual debate over which is the best only tricks me into believing that whichever distro I'd choose, it will be the wrong one.
Even for my old media server, there are 3 differents Linux mint : Cinnamon, Xfce and MATE.
What am I supposed to do? Spend a few hours to try each one and find the best for my 13 years old i5 with a Nvidia gt440 that's used 3 hours per month?
>What am I supposed to do? Spend a few hours to try each one and find the best for my 13 years old i5 with a Nvidia gt440 that's used 3 hours per month?
The performance difference will be minimal. It's an aesthetic choice, pick the one you like the look of or give a few of them a try.
It's like cars. Some people have extreme opinions on matters, some would be fine picking almost any car, and most test drive a few before picking their favorite.
Yeah, I think the answer if you aren't sure which car to get is "any of the popular ones are probably fine for you" and that's probably true for Linux distributions and software choices too.
If you have a spare usb stick, the cost to trying them is only the download time. Each is capable of the same things, the differences are purely aesthetic. So try them out and see which you like best. Or install all three and switch each time you login.
You actually don't know the true cost until you learn the quirks of the UI, how it handles proprietary drivers, upgrades, the packaging system, how up-to-date and complete its packages are, etc.
Well it is fine if Linux is not for you, I want to say.
But in the macOS vs Windows vs Linux debate, obviously one has to say what Linux does differently: and that's exactly what you seem to dislike. I.e. the freedom of choice.
If you just want something to use: install one of the most mainstream distros like Ubuntu or Fedora, accept the defaults, and move on with your life. There are compromises in all of the options, even my Mac has a handful of irritating problems.
The very reason I like Linux is for this diversity. I genuinely don't really get your point of view, which I actually see a lot, and which to me sounds like you want Windows or macOS, but somehow don't realise it.
Let's imagine this: some company makes an operating system based on Linux, in an efficient manner, by systematically choosing one way to solve a problem (one window manager, one init system, one file system, ...) and trying to meet the requirements of the mass to the detriment of freedom. It exists: it's called Android! Android is great, and it will eventually come to the Desktop for people who don't want Windows or macOS.
But fundamentally, what I call "Linux distributions" is not that. The whole point of Linux distributions, to me, is that even saying "GNU/Linux" doesn't work, because there are other userlands like "busybox/Linux"! Other init systems, other file systems, other windows managers, etc.
The cost of having a powerful core choosing "sane defaults" for the users (Windows, macOS, or similarly Android) is that it is very difficult to modify the system or even contribute to it. Look at e.g. GrapheneOS, an Android alternative (and which I use and love): it relies a lot on Google. Linux distributions are not like that: I can create my own Linux distribution as a weekend project.
Defamation is the most boring version of this case. Barring dishonest editing, of course it's fine.
There are hypothetical versions of this that get more interesting. Ohio is a one-party consent state. It's not clear what happens in a two-party consent state. Law enforcement has no expectation of privacy in public spaces. Private is "it depends," think cases where low enforcement is discussing something with one party in a domestic dispute. If he had used bodycam footage, then you get into interesting copyright laws. Is it public domain, and if not, is it sufficiently transformative to qualify as fair use (think April 29, 1992 by Sublime).
> If he had used bodycam footage, then you get into interesting copyright laws
Not that interesting. The US government cannot create copyrighted works. Works created by the government are public domain. This is why Ghidra (made by the NSA), for example, has a really odd license, where the parts written by the government are "not subject to U.S. copyright protections under 17 U.S.C.", whereas future contributions by the public are covered under the Apache license.
As one of said generation, I would chalk it up to instant communication creating innumerable shallow remote relationships that significantly replace time spent with others in person.
Tell them that they can only store integer powers of 2 and their sums exactly. 2^0 == 1. 2^-2 == .25. Then say it's the same with base 10. 10^-1 == 0.1. 1/9 isn't a power of 10, you you can't have an exact representation.
I think a read cache device gets set up like RAID0, interleaved reads rather than redundant data.
Examples of auxiliary devices where you want redundancy: there can be a write cache (the ZFS Intent Log, or ZIL). You can also dedicate a fast device for hot items like the deduplication tables, or a dedicated device for tiny files where data can be stored directly in the directory data, rather than allocating a separate data block.
I wish it had made it to thumb drives for its superior data retention. It doesn't work by holding a charge; it's phase-change, so it retains data longer.
I encountered FRAM chips in one PCB I worked with. It's like flash, but holds data forever and does not wear. One could easily create usb drive of small capacity using these chips. They are a bit expensive, but that longevity could be a market differentiator. So tech is there if you think you can sell it.
> I declined to work on it, as I was not sure if it's even possible or if it would be better to rewrite the entire thing from scratch with better prompts.
This is a bit of an unknown right now. If you get a working prototype, but need to productionize it, make sure it can scale, and get it looked over with a security mineset, how long it might take isn't clear, so finding someone who will do that is hard.
It sounds like a really crappy deal to a contractor. In the eyes of the client, you are basically a janitor and Claude is like a superstar that built the whole thing, while the truth is reviewing such code is harder than reviewing and quality approving one's own work. I hope it proves out to be uneconomical and we will be just rewriting the vibe code from scratch.
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